The extension needs to be able to connect to AWS CloudWatch in order to collect and send metrics. To do this, you will have to either establish a remote connection in between the extension and the product, or have an agent on the same machine running the product in order for the extension to collect and send the metrics.

Installation

Download and unzip AWSELBMonitor-<version>.zip into <machine_agent_dir>/monitors/

Edit the file config.yml located at <MachineAgent_Dir>/monitors/ The metricPrefix of the extension has to be configured as specified here. Please make sure that the right metricPrefix is chosen based on your machine agent deployment, otherwise this could lead to metrics not being visible in the controller.

Restart the Machine Agent.

Please place the extension in the "monitors" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory. Do not place the extension in the "extensions" directory of your Machine Agent installation directory.

Configuration

config.yml

In order to use the extension, you need to update the config.yml file that is present in the extension folder. The following is a step-by-step explanation of the configurable fields that are present in the config.yml file.

If SIM is enabled, then use the following metricPrefix -

metricPrefix: "Custom Metrics|AWS ELB|"

Else, configure the "COMPONENT_ID" under which the metrics need to be reported. This can be done by changing the value of <COMPONENT_ID> inmetricPrefix: "Server|Component:<COMPONENT_ID>|Custom Metrics|AWS ELB|".

For example,

metricPrefix: "Server|Component:100|Custom Metrics|AWS ELB|"

Provide accessKey(required) and secretKey(required) of your account(s), also provide displayAccountName(any name that represents your account) andregions(required). If you are running this extension inside an EC2 instance which has IAM profile configured then you don’t have to configure accessKey and secretKey values, extension will use IAM profile to authenticate. You can provide multiple accounts and regions as below -

If you want to encrypt the awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey then follow the “Credentials Encryption” section and provide the encrypted values in awsAccessKey and awsSecretKey. Configure enableDecryption of credentialsDecryptionConfig to true and provide the encryption key in encryptionKey. For example,

Provide all valid proxy information if you use it. If not, leave this section as is.

proxyConfig:
host:
port:
username:
password:

To report metrics from specific dimension values, configure the dimesion section. Dimensions for AWS ELB are AvailabilityZone and LoadBalancerName. For example to report metrics only from only AvailabilityZone dimension with value Sample, configure dimensions as below -

All these metric properties are optional, and the default value shown in the table is applied to the metric(if a property has not been specified) by default.

For several services AWS CloudWatch does not instantly update the metrics but it goes back in time to update that information. This delay sometimes can take upto 5 minutes. The extension runs every minute(Detailed) or every 5 minutes (Basic) and gets the latest value at that time. There may be a case where the extension may miss the value before CloudWatch updates it. In order to make sure we don’t do that, the extension has the ability to look for metrics during a certain interval, where we already have set it to default at 5 minutes but you can change it as per your requirements.

Please avoid using tab (\t) when editing yaml files. Please copy all the contents of the config.yml file and go to Yaml Validator . On reaching the website, paste the contents and press the “Go” button on the bottom left. If you get a valid output, that means your formatting is correct and you may move on to the next step.

Credentials Encryption

Please visit this page to get detailed instructions on accountAccessKey encryption. The steps in this document will guide you through the whole process.

Extensions Workbench

Workbench is an inbuilt feature provided with each extension in order to assist you to fine tune the extension setup before you actually deploy it on the controller. Please review the following document on How to use the Extensions WorkBench